|
New York in the 1980s is more than just the setting of this novel of philosophical
outcasts, it's a central character. We arrive with Will Parker who may be an insecure
young man from Wyoming, but he is already aware that if the gods know you're searching for
the Holy Grail, they won't let you find it. So Will has come to New York,
"not-searching" for his childhood friend and lover, Charlie 2Moons. Right away
his new friend Ruby steals his wallet, because, according to his other new friend True
Shot, "you asked him to…When you don't want something as much as you didn't want
your wallet to get stole that means only one thing."
Will moves into a cat-piss-soaked apartment on the East Side and gets a job as a waiter in
a trendy restaurant that his fellow-waiter Fiona calls the Cafe Cauchemar (French for
nightmare). Fiona talks a mile a minute through her cleft palate-scarred, bright red lips,
lacing her training on the espresso machine with her passionate view of life. Her true
love is performance art, her "Absolute Ultimate Idol" an artist named Argwings
Khodek, who happens to be a huge Black drag queen also called Rose, who happens to live
with his three dogs in an apartment above Will.
Welcome to Spanbauer country, a land of sex, drugs, coincidence, and sideways philosophy.
Trying to summarize even the characters in this sprawling novel is like trying to
summarize the Bible. Everyone has a sordid past and at least two names.
Between bouts of seriously decadent partying, Will reveals in flashback the lurid details
of his white-trash childhood. We meet his older sister Bobbie, a tough-talking tomboy
until she turns 14 and abandons Will for the privacy of her bedroom. We meet Will and
Bobbie's father Cotton, a sadistic rodeo performer who climbs into Bobbie's bed at night
and mostly ignores the rest of the family; Will's mother has long ago succumbed to
depression, denial, and cigarettes. And we meet Charlie, an Indian kid growing up in his
mom's double wide trailer/beauty parlor. Charlie 2Moons introduces 12-year-old Will to
trick riding, rolling cigarettes, blood brotherhood, and sex.
The themes and narrative voice of this novel are similar to Spanbauer's earlier work, THE
MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON. He even reuses the image of the killdeer, the bird
that fakes being wounded in order to draw prey away from her nest. "She leads you
away from what you really want. Then, after she's betrayed you, the killdeer bird leaves
you alone in the middle of the desert in the twilight, she abandons you to what you've
been looking for all your life. Yourself."
If freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, then these folks are truly
unchained. As Bobbie puts it, "Ain't one of us fits in anywhere. And we never
will." Apparently, this frees them to undertake the Journey and partake of as much
sex and drugs as possible along the way. Unfortunately, it doesn't free them from the
early days of AIDS, which dutifully takes its toll on Will's New York friends.
Spanbauer breaks as many rules as his characters do. His descriptions can be simple and
effective, as in this one from a particularly violent scene: "The black dress on
Mother in the unrelenting sun was a dark hole in the morning." He repeats certain
phrases dozens of times in the book, almost as punctuation. The one-sentence paragraphs
establish a certain rhythm, but in a 500-page novel, it begins to seem a little over the
top.
The novel travels back and forth between Will's unfortunate childhood and his quest in New
York, where he ultimately redeems himself in mythic battles against white patriarchy and
performance anxiety. In the funniest chapter, the restaurant staff plays a variation of
musical chairs, with the loser having to strip for the rest of them after hours.
Guess who loses. IN THE CITY OF SHY HUNTERS, like the city it's named for, is daring,
original, outrageous, and not for the faint-of-heart.
--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol (ezn1@aol.com)
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
